[Alan Lloys]

How far do we drive when mowing - GPS has the answer

First off - Yes I know I am a geek besides being a tractorhead. :fing32:

Anyway I had this old GPS rattling around in my drawer for several years and today I finally remember to take it with me when I went to mow the lawn. There was a threat of rain and a few drops, so I probably went a little bit faster than usual.

But I was surprised about what the actual mowing speed of the Legacy was with the tow behind unit on. I was maxing out at around 6.5 mph and was getting good cutting.

This is the rig I am using:

As you can see I am mowing around 9' swath at a time.

This is what the GPS looked like in breadcrumb mode. The area on the top right is the pond.

This is what the odometer showed

7 miles total. And an average moving (or is that mowing) speed of 5 mph.
The max speed of 8.9 was likely when I was mowing with the tractor only and going from one area to the other. I always do the borders of the lawn first and all the difficult areas with just the tractor before I hook up the tow behind.

I just wanted to share this with you all as I was pretty surprised myself on how far I drove in just one mowing

 

[pigsitter]

How big of an area did you cover to rack up that much distance?

 

[Firefyter-Emt]

OH you KNOW that I have to try this the next time I mow! Dang, and I just finished mowing too... It takes me about an hour and a half, but I mow slow. Thanks for the idea!

 

[UrbanTractor]

How big of an area did you cover to rack up that much distance?

Ditto. Could you give an estimate of the acreage mowed?

Very cool, by the way.

 

[JPlus14]

I am happy to know that I am not the only one that has used a GPS while mowing. I traveled about 2 miles while mowing an acre. It was interesting to upload the track from the GPS to a topo map. It was very easy to see where my property was on the map, where my house and drive are and trees that I mowed around.

The geek in me wants to figure out how to use the GPS to control the mower, GPS guided garden tractor. But there goes the seat time.

 

[Aksarben96]

Pretty neat , Information overload ! So you figure about 49 plus miles a year just mowing ? You will have to try this again this winter and see what that produces , Do you have a long driveway ?

 

[NEWT92]

I done that on all my jobs last year. Heres the thread http://www.mytractorforum.com/showthread.php?t=85548

Its amazing how the miles add up in a hurry on just a normal size yard. :thSick:

 

[Alan Lloys]

How big of an area did you cover to rack up that much distance?

My lot is 5 acres so if you subtract the house, pond, driveway etc. it should be just around 4 acres actual lawn cutting.

 

[Alan Lloys]

Pretty neat , Information overload ! So you figure about 49 plus miles a year just mowing ? You will have to try this again this winter and see what that produces , Do you have a long driveway ?

I think I mow the lawn a lot more than 7 times per year so I think it will be closer to 100+ miles per year.
This is all regular lawn that gets cut every week. The distance actually did not include the rough section out back I only do every other week or so. It is small though so it wouldn't make any difference.

I have about 300 ft of driveway so it will not add up to much for me with 4 passes on it.
But now you did get me going so I might just measure it.

 

[davidg]

i gotta fix my garmin III to see how far i actually drive while mowing. today i spent 5 hours on the X500 cutting the 4 acres and spraying 45 gallons of RoundUp in the ditches and around the trees/obstacles. it was a crying shame that i spent more time spraying than mowing! normally i use almost half a tank of gas to cut lot, but today i used nearly a full tank. and naturally it was 98F when i was out there! the last couple weekends have been upper 80's and i spent them in the dove field instead of cutting grass, so today i had to pay for skipping 3 weeks of cutting grass.

 

[Aksarben96]

Alan Lloys : I flubbed the math . sorry I multiplied 7 times 7 equaling 49 . not 4 times 7 equaling 28 times 7 months that would have been 196 . in any case its a suprising amount of miles just for one lawn .